Month: April 2011

This first bike is going to be a family project. The older son has already ordered a replacement handlebar with riser and lowered pegs (all 3 of us are 6′ plus) from ProCycle. It will spend the summer in Pennsylvania then come here to Michigan in the fall.

What proved the final straw for DCM, according to Vinay Bharat-Ram, was the partially convertible debentures that the company was forced to issue in the early 1990s. This raised the debt on the company’s books from Rs 50 crore in 1991-92 to Rs 400 crore in 1997-98. The pressure, he says, came from his youngest brother, Vivek. According to Vinay Bharat-Ram, Vivek was a close friend of Rajiv Gandhi, who had become prime minister in 1984, because the two of them had studied together in Doon School. This, he alleges, went to Vivek’s head and he began to throw his weight around. The debentures too, he adds, were Vivek’s idea. The issue, incidentally, was handled by Harish Bhasin — Swraj Paul’s broker when he had wanted to acquire DCM in the mid-1980s. In 1999, there was another separation of ways. Vivek went his way with DCM Financial Services and DCM Benetton, while Arun, the third brother, got control of SRF.